Upon our arrival in Bonaire (a sunny though slightly windy day; typical Bonaire weather), we walked off the ship in search of high speed Internet. Our goal was to download a season of a TV show, so, about 11 hours of video. There is a wonderful Internet provider in the little plaza next to the Del Sol store ($4 for 30 minutes; $6 for an hour), but the manager told us it would not allow for video downloading over wifi. However, he had an Ethernet cable we could use...success! We purchased the show from iTunes and started downloading it, and simultaneously purchased an hour of wifi for each of our iPhones. Heaven! While the TV show was downloading, we also downloaded TurboTax, which we had purchased online in St. Thomas a couple of weeks ago. Once downloaded, we installed it and downloaded updates and...well, for 60 minutes, both of us and our electronics were running on overdrive.
We re-packed my laptop in my backpack and walked back to the ship to have a bite of lunch (2 slices of pizza for each of us), and then gathered up our two Swimways floats and my mask and snorkel, layered on the sunscreen and walked back off the ship.
Our goal was something we've wanted to do for awhile...we put in our floats next to Karel's bar and restaurant (on the pier next to the cruise ship dock from which the water taxi to Klein Bonaire departs), settled ourselves in them and proceeded to paddle down the entire length of the waterfront in Kralendjik. At least G paddled; I spent most of the time in the water, snorkeling and kicking.
We paddled/ snorkeled the length of the bright blue area:
While the coral wasn't impressive, the fish were, particularly around the small docks which house the fishing boats. There were several huge fish carcasses in the bottom, not gross because they were cleaned out, but be forewarned. But, exactly for that reason, the fish life was abundant. A school of at least 100 blue tangs seemed to play "follow the leader" with me the entire time, I saw several beautiful angel fish and many types of parrot fish. I even saw one sea snake on the bottom, but kept my distance. Sadly, I didn't take my iPhone...for this first venture, I decided my Tilly hat and sunglasses were more important. But I spent so much time actually in the water snorkeling that next time I'll leave the hat and glasses behind and take the iPhone instead.
Though the water temperature was warm (83.5F degrees), after two hours I was getting cold and G was getting tired of paddling with his arms. Luckily, we were just passing a dock from which G spotted a rusted ladder hanging. It was a bit slippery, but we climbed up it and hoisted our floats up on the dock, and then walked back to the ship. I had worn a swim skirt and my rash guard, just to be a bit covered up on the walk back to the ship, and I had skipped using fins and simply worn my Tevas while I snorkeled. The whole venture was very successful; we didn't get run over by a boat, we didn't get blown over to Klein Bonaire, and we had no trouble getting out of the water (these had all been concerns). Most significantly, it cost us nothing, is available on every stop in Bonaire, and can be done on our own schedule. And it was fun!
Once back on the ship, it was nearly 5pm, so we showered quickly and went to Dinner with Darko. I was tired. Really tired. I could barely keep my eyes open over dinner, and we ate in near silence (thank God for a table for two!). We had planned to go to the 7:15pm performance of production show Disco: Blame it on the Boogie in the Princess Theater (there is no other featured performer tonight), but I was just too tired. Instead we stood up on the Promenade Deck while the lines were released and the Emerald Princess pushed away from the dock at 7pm...
...then went up to the jogging track on Deck 19 for a photo of the ship sailing into the western sky just after sunset...
...then met up on the Terrace Deck for a Gin and Tonic while watching the moon's reflection on the ship's wake and the lights of Bonaire fade in the distance.
And, as the icing on the cake of a generally perfect day, we have lots new TV shows to watch in our cabin. I haven't seen The Love Boat in nearly a week.
Life is good! ;-)
